My Vocational Ed Problem

You said you believe that kids are motivated more by good teaching than by programs. I believe that they're motivated primarily by neither. My reading of "Stand and Deliver" (that jibes with my own classroom experience) is that the kids at Garfield were not motivated so much by good teaching as they were by a sense of possibility. It seems to me that Escalante's genius was much more than effective teaching. It was making the seemingly impossible seem possible.

Yes, some gifted teachers have the magical ability to, by the sheer force of their personalities, imbue kids with a sense of beat-the-odds possibility, but that is way too much to expect of most teachers (as it would be in any profession). Kids know full well that by their sophomore years, certainly by their junior years, the winners and losers in the college game have already been chosen and that their last few years on the college prep track are just so much garbage time before they move on to the default settings of 2-year college, trade school or the military. Don't we have an obligation at that point to offer them some other exciting possibilities that don't require them to overcome the overwhelming odds against their making it to a four-year college (or do you believe there aren't any? Isn't it the height of elitism to believe that, short of college, any other life pursuit is just a dreary consolation prize? ).

JayPoint 4: Most high school vocational programs [are bad] and if we have to have them, why can't they be integrated with a college prep program?

The reason that they usually [are bad] is exactly my point. In the bad old days they [were bad] because there was no great social or economic imperative for them to be effective. Throughout the middle of the twentieth century there were relatively abundant middle class career tracks available to the unskilled, non-college bound high school graduates. The true function of high school for most was largely a social one. Beginning about 25 years ago, that situation began to change dramatically. Virtually overnight, unskilled high school graduates began finding themselves in deep doo-doo. Unfortunately, while recognizing this situation, the overwhelming response of the educational elites has been to, in effect, say "lets start preparing everyone to go to college" (kind of like the navy deciding to put every single recruit through SEAL training), completely bypassing the vibrant mid-range of our economy that has a huge appetite for skilled -- but not necessarily college educated -- workers. Yes, in the last decade there has been a strong "school-to-work" movement that has resulted in many "career themed" academies. But these are almost always just a thin gloss over the traditional college prep core. It's an improvement but it doesn't address the core problem.

I'd like to know more about that program in Oakland that you say actually trained some kids for something. Personally, I've never seen a voc. ed. "program" that consisted of more than two or three elective classes, usually not in sequence, which is why our great auto shop and culinary arts teachers are used as dumping grounds. They're a tempting placement for counselors trying to find garbage time placements for seniors who are just filling out their credits. Again, as our auto shop teacher says, if you want to actually prepare a kid for a modern auto tech job right out of high school, you need an intensive two-year program, not one or two classes where the kids tinker with outdated wrecks.

JayPoint 5 (I'm inferring a bit here): Hey Peters, you'd be a lot more interesting if you were actually doing something, like starting a charter school based on your vision, than just yapping to me about it. Theories are just words. People who can effectively put them into practice are stories.

Definitely your strongest point. I'm working very hard with a group of 12 very thoughtful teachers at our school, along with our principal, to put together a plan to break our school into meaningful smaller learning communities that offer alternatives to the standard college prep track. Many schools doing this as "SLC's" (smaller learning communities) are definitely the flavor of the decade in school reform. Our frustration is that the onerous demands of the college prep core leave us with very few options other than to sprinkle a few cute electives around the college prep core. No teacher has the leverage to question that conventional wisdom (as I believe most now do) and be taken seriously.

MATHEWS:Points 1 and 3: This I don't get. I have been writing a lot lately about community colleges that are taking plenty of kids with poor high school grades, some of whom did not even graduate from high school. If high school kids of this sort are getting the message that there is no place in college for them, then the high school is guilty of malpractice, or neglect. Give me an example of a C student who wanted to get into community college and could not, and I will change my mind, and write a story about him, with all the details. Otherwise, this point makes no sense to me, even in this period of budget crises in California.

My impression from talking to such kids is they don't go on to college because they much prefer a work life, even at low wages, to a school life. If indeed they are getting a message that college is not for them, I would love for you to tell me exactly when and how and from whom they are getting that message.

Point 2: A good point for you, although I would argue that the community college system give them lots of opportunity after age 18. It's not free, but it is pretty reasonable, and they can work while they go to school.

Point 4: You haven't addressed my most important complaint, that public schools are simply not set up, and never will be, to create a useful vocational course of the kind you describe. Too many public school people involved in the decision making process don't understand the industries and what they need. This will only work if the school system gives the hiring companies complete control of the program.

Point 5: This, of course, is your strongest point too.